Elara closed her eyes, the moan expiring on her lips.

The courtyard erupted like the thunderous cacophony of an oncoming storm.

"By the dead gods," said Kelena. "No...it can't be."

Bazel gasped. "That traitorous cunt...that fucking traitorous snake..."

"He sold us out..." Anton murmured. "That fucker actually sold us out."

But Elara could not speak. She could barely breathe. Pain wracked her chest. Crushed her lungs.

Kelena grasped onto her arm, pulling her close. "We need to leave...now!" she added with a hiss.

When she did not—could not— move, Kelena slipped one arm around her, fingers digging into Elara's shoulder, but Elara could barely feel it. Her whole body was numb. She could feel nothing from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair. Nothing apart from the agony that threatened to tear her heart into pieces.

"We have to leave...Anton, help me!"

Kelena's voice was desperate, pleading, and Elara wrenched her gaze from the man standing on the platform—the man she had briefly known, the man she had allowed to know her—and stared into her friend's face. Her vision blurred with hot tears.

Kelena gripped her arm and moved in front. "We don't have time for that," she said, even though her own eyes were glassy. "Give him nothing now but give yourself a fucking chance. Do you hear me?"

A scream broke through the noise, and Elara turned to see a woman being dragged through the crowd, the people grabbing her, lifting her off her feet. She kicked and struggled against them, tears streaming down her face, her terrified wails carrying over their heads.

"This is her!"

"We have her...the fucking witch. We have her!"

Frozen, Elara watched as the woman—who absolutely wasn't a witch—was carried past her, her pleading, petrified eyes meeting Elara's as she was swept forward and thrown onto the stone steps in front of the Druvari. The snap of bone made Elara flinch. The woman's wrist most likely, from the way she had landed, her body crumpled, her hand twisted beneath her.

Two Highguards grabbed her, one by her hair, the other clutching her injured wrist. The woman howled as they dragged her halfway up the steps, forcing her to her knees. Juda stepped closer, his expression unmoved and blank, as he motioned for one of the Highguards to show him her face.

The one with his hand in her hair yanked her head back at an uncomfortable angle.

It took no time at all for Juda to shake his head and walk away.

Lifting his foot, the Highguard kicked the woman down the steps, and she landed at the bottom, dazed and sobbing, clutching her wrist to her chest.

No one helped her.

A scream came from the other side of the courtyard. And another and another.

The crowd was wild now with fury and terror, trampling over one another to drag the accused women as others moved towards the palace gates. Spittle and blood flew. Desperation surged in their veins. Wrath spewed in a torrent from their mouths as they unravelled at Juda's promise. Everything they had been prepared to fight for was washed away in an instant, and all they cared for now was the water. Maybe it had always been what they cared about, and Elara had been too carried away with their plot to realise that nothing had ever changed in Grimefell.

It was so simple really, that even Elara had to marvel at how easy it was. How one promise had swayed everything in the king's favour. In Juda's favour.

"Quick, to the gates!" Anton said, grabbing her and pulling her with him through the jostling crowd.

The crush of bodies pulsed all around her, and the deafening din of alarm throbbed in her ears. Caught in the grips of panic, a surge of people flowed out of the courtyard as the Druvari at the palace gates attempted to bar their exit. They pushed on the heavy doors, heaving with all their might to try to close them, but instead gave up, grabbing hold of women attempting to flee. As Elara and her friends passed through the threshold, she turned to see a young girl forced face-first against the wall as the Druvari who held her there ripped her hood from her head. Yanking a handful of hair out of the way, he ignored her cries of pain as he examined the flesh behind her ears.

Fresh agony lanced through Elara as Juda's betrayal became clear.

He had revealed her secret. That thing they had held sacred between them. Her honesty laid bare, finally, and he had taken it and crushed it in his cruel hands as if it had meant nothing to him.

She had meant nothing to him. She knew that now. How fucking foolish had she been?

The fleeing crowd was running now, some managing to push their way through the Highguards who attempted to stop them, groups splintering off into side streets. As one such group met with particular resistance, some beaten to the ground, Kelena seized the opportunity of distraction and spied a gap in the mob.

"There! Go, go!" she urged, ushering them through.

They broke into a side street, following it down deeper into the mid-echelon. Many had seized the same opportunity, and footsteps and cries of panic agitated the air, filling Elara's gut until she was so full of fear that she thought she might puke as she ran.

Filing out into the next street, she was struck with a sense of odd familiarity, the ghost of a recent memory.

She knew this part of the citadel. She had been here...with him. This was where he had brought her.

No sooner had the thought hurtled into her mind, cold and intrusive, she heard the voice.

"Girl, this way damn it..."

Roth Vi-Garran grabbed at her arm, attempting to pull her from the fleeing hoard, and she moved quickly, flying at him as he rounded the corner of his home—the home that had housed and nurtured the cold, blackened heart of Juda Vikaris. Anton, Kelena and Bazel followed, helping Elara pin Roth to the wall, her blade at his throat.

He could have easily moved against her, she knew it, and yet he did nothing but slump back, lifting his chin to bare more of his throat. Pain clustered at the corners of his eyes and dragged on his mouth.

"You would slice open my throat now, girl, and I would not blame you..."

"Shut up, you pitiful fucking wretch," she hissed at him. "Give me not your protests of innocence. I am betrayed. There is nothing more than that now." A sob caught in her throat, stilled only by the anger that filled her entire body.

He winced as the edge of the blade met his flesh, but still, he did nothing.

"I swear to you, on Eva's memory, I swear..."

Hot tears pricked Elara's eyes. He dare not evoke her mother's name now. "Fuck you, fuck you...you did this. If you hadn't used him so...if you had just let him be..."

"Be what, girl?" Roth said, hot flares creeping into his face. "What do you think he would have become without me? He was already a Ban-Keren the moment he climbed into my study and plunged that blade into my hand. Think I did not see that madman in his eyes from the first moment I looked upon him? Think I did not recognise the blackness in his heart and see it for what it was? My training and the Order did not make him this thing that he is."

He paused, something passing in his expression that Elara could not identify. Grief, maybe. Regret, yes, but all too quickly, the anger returned, shadowing all else.

"A monster has lain under Juda's skin for his entire life, and I kept that monster from bursting out of his fucking chest! I kept the memory of his mother alive so that he would think only of her and kill the man who put his bastard seed inside his mother's belly. I knew only Juda could be the one to see it through to the end because only someone with the same capacity for darkness could kill Ban-Keren."

"You knew...you always knew..." The tears ran down her face now, the rage and grief and pain pouring out of her, the liquid sour. 

"I was not certain until I met the boy myself, but then...yes, by the dead gods, I knew," he said, his face twisting, bitterness lacing his tone and ageing his features. "It tore me to shreds to know how that beast had taken my Aleina, how he manipulated her to give him what he wanted. What choice did a slum girl ever have against a king such as he?"

"Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself, you old bastard," spat Bazel, clutching onto Roth's cloak and pressing into him, his blade gripped in his fist. His face was distraught, rare emotion clouding his eyes. Elara wondered how much of this was for them and how much was for the faith he had fostered for the old man, now lost to fear and uncertainty.

"If you think my sorrow is for me, you are mistaken, lad." Roth shook his head. "My grief is for Juda, for whatever befell him inside those blackened walls, I cannot fathom. All I know is that he went inside shrouded by the memory of his mother, and he has come out without her. That place has stripped him bare, right down to the bones and blood of his father."

He looked at Elara then, his eyes pleading. "Girl, hear me when I say, whatever the king has told him, whatever they have offered him in return for his treachery, know that he went there to do what we had always planned. That had not changed. The only thing that had changed was that, for the first time in his entire life, I saw hope. I saw a Juda with a heart thawed...mayhap not fully but warming for something other than revenge. Something more than this path on which I made him tread."

If it was meant to soothe her, it did not. Instead, pain lanced fresh like the salting of a wound. The sting of it bit hard.

"Did you not hear him?" she said. "Were you not witness to the same spectacle as I? He gave me up. He said my name. My name, Roth! They know everything. They know what I am and how to identify me. There will be no hiding now, not for me, not for any of us. His heart is not thawed. It is as cold and as poisonous as it always was."

Voices rose from the street beyond, the swell of screams gripping them all.

"Listen to me, I can get you onto a ship," Roth said, his voice hoarse. "I have favours to call in. But we must go now, straight to the port. There is no time left for talk."

"We cannot trust him," Bazel hissed.

"I am betrayed too, rat," Roth replied, only to get the tip of the boy's blade pressed to his cheekbone. He winced but continued. "Did you not hear? He declared me a traitor. If I do not get on that ship, I will be found and hung from the palace walls upon the next tide. If you want a chance, you will release me and let me help you. There is no other way now."

Anton clutched Elara's shoulder, his thumb pressing into the dip of her collarbone. "He's right, Elara, as much as I hate to give him anything. We have no choice."

His voice whispered of fear, and the sound of it clawed at her heart. She could not bear their terror; could not cope with the knowledge that her fate would also bring about theirs. Beaten, broken, she nodded, her lip trembling. She withdrew her knife from Roth's throat and stepped back.

"Yes, okay...yes." Another unwanted tear slipped fat and pained down her cheek, and her friend pressed his beautiful mouth to it, kissing it from her skin. Kelena did the same, and surprisingly—although perhaps not, after all—Bazel slipped his hand into hers and squeezed.

Roth nodded; his mouth set in a grim line. "Come then, stay close and by the dead gods, do not tarry. He will know that is where we will go, for however I raised him, I never once raised him to be a fool."

With the midtide sun strong and the shadows thin, they followed Roth behind his home, taking a narrow path that snaked down towards the port. Far ahead, the Setalah shimmered, the sun's reflection on its glimmering surface painting it a jewel on the landscape. Elara could no longer feel the thrum of her foremothers' song in her veins, but she could hear the Naiad whispering under her skin.

Take to the waters. A Naiad needs not the firm tread of a ship's deck under her feet.

It was an impossibility. She would not leave them now. They were hers, and she was theirs. Too long had she swum alone in Druvaria. Too long had she waded depths without the anchor of family to steady her. They had kissed the grief from her face, cradled it in their hands, and she would not desert them now, not even as the Setalah called to her the closer they got.

The tang of sea salt hung in the air as they hit the edge of Grimefell, their pace never slowing, the stretch of their lungs pulling harshly on their throats. The slums were chaos. Those who had made it out of the king's courtyard were either fleeing or dragging women into the streets. Terror and disgust festered deep in Elara's gut. In their efforts to convince the people that traitors sought to divide the kingdom, Dageor and Juda had ripped Grimefell apart at the seams.

How the people would ever mend the threads of it, she did not know, and she knew she should not even care—why should she when they would tear her apart if she was discovered? And yet, as she passed through the edges, a pang of sorrow and grief clawed its way into her heart. This was where Eva had raised her. Where she had hummed lullabies to her at eventide, brushing strands of hair from her forehead. Where they had swum together into the Naiad temple deep under the citadel. Each cobblestone bore the imprint of memory. Each breath of air whispered her song. Grimefell may have abandoned the Naiad, but Elara had never quite abandoned them.

Reaching the harbour square, Roth slowed his pace close to the Mariner's Voyage, its ramshackle, salt-worn shopfront closed for the tide, as was every other merchant store in Druvaria. Elara's heart plummeted. The port was a heaving mass of panic, people desperately haggling with the crew of the ships docked there. One huge vessel—cheese and milk powder from Drogia, judging by the pungent smell—had already set sail, one interloper clinging to the hull, his fingers prised from the edge by a furious boatswain. He fell into the sea with a scream that was lost to the chaos.

"Remain here; I will be quick," Roth promised, pulling his cloak tight around him, his hood draped over his head and covering the top half of his face, almost concealing the old scars of the Batak oil that still graced his skin.

They stood together, alert, huddled into the arch of the doorway. Thick, roughened rope had been nailed to the wall, an attempt at decoration, but Elara could only stare at it—at the patch of fresh blood, smearing the woollen fibres at eye level. At her feet, more blood and footprints spread across the cobbles. She inhaled a trembling breath and squeezed Kelena's hand, her grip tight.

"Ease up there, dragerine bear," Kelena whispered, her attempt at a smile difficult to see. Her smile was a rarity, and beautiful to behold, but Elara only wanted it when it was real. Not this forced thing that could easily be a grimace.

She relaxed her grip but did not let go.

At the dockside, Roth was talking with a Dreynian man, all thickened muscle and hardened sea-worn skin. His beard was almost to his chest, his hair roughly hewn to his skull. Roth passed him a purse, clearly bulky with coin, and the man seemed to weigh it in his hand before giving a grim nod.

Roth glanced over to where they stood and gestured with a flick of his hand.

Come. Come now.

"Quick. And keep your heads down," urged Kelena.

Leaving the confines of the archway, they darted across the square to where he stood. Roth grasped Elara's forearm.

"This here is Shipmaster Ras Choldus," he said, nodding to the man, whose thick leather waistcoat was laced halfway up his torso until the thongs simply couldn't reach across his broad chest. "He'll grant us passage on his longboat to the The Saltcaster docked on the far side of the harbour."

Elara glanced over to where Roth gestured, spying a tall square rigger, its terracotta-coloured masts and ivory sails spiking suspicion in her chest. "That's a Carraterrean vessel," she noted. "What's a Dreynian doing with Carraterrean ship?"

"Esh." The Shipmaster wheezed out the Dreynian curse word. "Picky, are ya? If you must know, I won it in a game of One Hundred Blades with a Carraterrean salter." He held up one huge hand, his small digit missing from the knuckle upwards, the scarred skin puckering over the bone. "What is this, Vi-Garran?" he demanded of Roth. "I thought you said you wanted off of this gods-abandoned rock?"

"And we do," Roth assured him, turning to Elara. "We're not leaving any other way, girl. I've known this man since before I joined The Order. There's none better than The Saltcaster and no Shipmaster more skilled than he. Now, you either get in the longboat or you try your luck on these shores."

Ras Choldus sniffed hard, swallowing whatever mulch he'd inhaled up through his nostrils before spitting out onto the worn cobbles. "I've already been paid, girl. Makes no difference to me if you come or not, but I am leaving now." He pointed to the ship, which was already making its way towards the edge of the port, before the bay opened into the ocean. "There's a storm coming, and I'm needed to beat off the lee shore."

Elara glanced at the others, but she instantly knew she didn't need to ask them the question. Their grave, fearful expressions told her everything. The violence of the crowds at the port was not waning, but time and opportunity were.

"Yes, okay," she said, and Roth exhaled tersely, raising a dark brow. He reached out and grasped the Shipmaster's hand in agreement.

Following Ras to the end of the docking pier, Elara spied a high-sided longboat moored there, a crew of six men waiting—none who looked any more welcoming than their Shipmaster. A rope ladder was rolled out from the edge of the dock, its ends dangling into the waters, not that anyone was about to test its depths. A casting line was pulled tight, a seaman grasping it in place, muscles straining with effort and arms slick with sweat.

The Shipmaster navigated the ladder with ease, stepping onto the boat before reaching out a hand to help Kelena onboard first. Bazel scrambled down, followed by Anton, but just as Elara's foot touched the first rung, furious shouts rang out from across the port, and screams pierced the bustling air.

On the far side, close to where Elara and her friends had huddled into the blood-stained archway, Highguards of The Serpent Order had filed into the square, cutting down anyone unfortunate enough to stray into their path. It was rare to see so many all at once, apart from when lined up to direct the people on their path to the palace for The Gathering. Elara knew instantly the reason why they were here, and it was not to stop the people who were trying—and failing quite miserably—to find passage off Druvaria.

As the crowd broke apart, desperate to flee their onslaught, a contingency of Highguards sheared through the throng, and at their helm was an Elite Guard, wearing the same distinctive red and black uniform he had not so long ago discarded onto the steps of the king's keep.

Elara's heart thudded—a painful wrench inside her chest full of loathing and grief. She didn't want to grieve this man nor this thing she felt upon seeing him again—an aching, baleful storm that once spoke to her of want and longing and now only engulfed her in shame. 

Their eyes met— how could they not? —and there was a fleeting sense of knowing, of familiarity, where she could almost smell the scent of his skin and feel the insistent press of his fingers exploring her flesh, and then...it was gone. The cries of the desperate crowd surged against her, making her blink it away. Juda issued an order and the Highguards' attention was fixed firmly upon her and Roth.

"Go, now!" Roth insisted, pushing at her, but she caught hold of his arm and held him there. He looked down at her face, one hand cupping her chin. How the hands of a butcher could ever offer such a gentle touch, she did not know, but it was the look in his eyes that surprised her the most.

"I said, do not tarry, did I not? For Eva, yes? For your foremothers." He pressed a rough kiss to her forehead before shoving her hard, and she was tumbling backwards off the edge of the high pier, tumbling into the arms of Ras Choldus, who half threw her into the boat.

The seaman holding the casting line sliced through the ends of the rope with a broad, heavy cutlass, and the crew busied their oars, sweeping the longboat away from the port side and towards the Carraterrean ship awaiting them.

"Roth!" screamed out Elara, struggling in Anton's grip. "Roth, no! He's going to get himself killed." She clawed at Anton's chest, watching Roth as he shrugged off his cloak, drawing his khilis sword and holding it ready.

They were still close enough for her to see him grin as the harbour square cleared, the crowds thinning out at the edges and the Highguards advancing upon him.

"Aye, come then, boy," he called out to Juda. "Come then, your grace, and let's see how much you've learned."

But Juda did not heed his guardian's call.

Instead, he stood firm, as The Order simply swarmed upon Roth. He was good, Elara would give Roth that much, and the first two who reached him were cut down with ease, but what could one man do against such a force, even if that man was Rothario Vi-Garran, once Special Commander of the Elite Guard and Blade of the King himself?

It was not long before he disappeared from view, his muffled cries of pain still echoing across the dock as the Highguards fell upon him and swallowed him up whole.

When he emerged, he was slumped on his knees, disarmed and bloodied, one Highguard's hand in his long hair, wrenching back his head, his eyes closed and body limp. By now, the longboat had reached the ship, the ladder had been unrolled and Elara was being half-dragged upwards onto its deck, too fixated by the scene on the pier to care about what was happening. She knew not whether Roth was alive or dead, only that he had given everything to ensure his promise to Eva had not been completely in vain. He might not have been able to put an end to the king, but he had ensured the safe passage of her child—the last of the Naiad.

Juda, who had stood back as his guards—yes, his, for they did his bidding now—had dealt with Roth, now advanced, and Elara's breath caught in her throat. His hand gripped the hilt of the khilis on one side; on the other, the kystos, the short leather whip with its jagged, ruthless barbs.

"No..." She whispered her plea as if it might travel on the breeze and curl around his ears. "No, Juda, please..."

But instead of doing what she had feared he would—for she would not put any evil beyond his grasp now—Juda walked past the broken, kneeling figure of his guardian and approached the edge of the dock. Below him, the Setalah was so very close, and yet, he displayed no trepidation, no fear, considering his death could lay just one careless step ahead.

Juda Ban-Keren, once slum-rat, then novice Highguard, now the crown prince of an entire kingdom, was not and had never been careless. His whole journey through this world, since the tide upon which his mother was taken from him, had been navigated with a cold, calculated surety that he would always get what he wanted. Elara could see that now. Through fools' eyes, she could see it so clearly, despite the growing distance between them, as The Saltcaster manoeuvred out of the bay of Druvaria.

He did not move from the edge, and neither did she.

The Naiad and the novice.

The Last Water Witch and the Prince.

Their eyes remained locked on each other, just as they had the moment they had first met. Deep within the caverns below the city where the dragon's gold could make even Druvarian rock look beautiful. Deep inside this ill-fated citadel where the darkness dripping from the black throne itself had seeped into its core and where her foremothers had lain their vengeance upon a kingdom already cursed.

As The Saltcaster carried her out onto the Setalah, finally, she lost sight of him and then, soon, lost sight of Druvaria completely.

Standing on the deck, clutching onto the side, away from her friends, Elara let her whisper carry across the deadly sea, promising her own dark vow against the kingdom where a boy with a poisonous heart could be proclaimed a hero and a girl with the power to free them from a curse be declared a monster.

"When I return, it will not be to lift you from the dark sorcery of my foremothers but to plunge you all to the very depths of the Setalah. I swear it, upon my blood, upon the waters, upon the story yet to be told—the true story of the last water witch. If it is a monster that you want, Druvaria, then it is a monster you shall get."

She looked up. The clouds above were growing heavy, thick veins of violet strangling the clear blue skies, and the waters below were restless.

Ras Choldus had been right.

A storm was coming.

***

THE END